Nearly half of all adults (47%) go online with a laptop using a Wi-Fi connection or mobile broadband card (up from the 39% who did so as of April 2009), according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.
Other factoids in the Pew Study:
- In 2009, Americans averaged 19 hours a week, up from 9.4 hours in 2000.
- More people are online than ever. In 2009, 82 percent of Americans said they use the Internet, up from 67 in 2000.
- 18 percent of Internet users said they stopped subscribing to the print edition of a magazine or newspaper because they can get the same content online.
- Texting is most popular among young people: cell phone users under 18 sent an average of 81 text messages each day. This is up from 51 in 2008. Counting all age groups, texters sent an average of 38 messages a day, up from 23 a year earlier.
Some 40% of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32% of Americans who did this in 2009). African Americans and Hispanics continue to be among the most avid users of the Internet over their cellphones, reports the Washington Post.
But, when it comes to accessing the Web over mobile devices, Americans are far behind their Internet-connected counterparts in Japan, South Korea and parts of Europe, reports the AP.
“We are a third-world country where mobile is concerned. The rest of the world is using mobile phones underground, to pay for a parking space blocks away, to buy a Coke from a vending machine,” said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for Digital Future at the University of Southern California, who released a report (pdf) earlier this year. “We in America are still having trouble getting our phones to (make calls).”
“The mobile phone is the single most valuable device in people’s lives,” Cole said. “It’s becoming a device you use for virtually everything.”
